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Wednesday, 5 October 2016

Hurricane Matthew hits Haiti and Cuba

Hurricane
Matthew, the fiercest Caribbean storm in almost a decade, hit Cuba
and Haiti with 140 mile-per-hour (230 kph) winds on Tuesday,
pummeling towns, farmland and resorts, and forcing hundreds of
thousands of people to take cover.

Dubbed
by the U.N. the worst humanitarian crisis to hit Haiti since a
devastating 2010 earthquake, the Category Four hurricane unleashed
torrential rain on the island of Hispaniola that Haiti shares with
Dominican Republic.

As
it barreled towards the United States, the eye of the storm had
reached the coast of eastern Cuba by Tuesday evening, the Miami-based
National Hurricane Center (NHC) said.

At
least four people were killed in the Dominican Republic by collapsing
walls and mudslides, as well as two in Haiti, where communications in
the worst-hit areas were down, making it hard for authorities to
assess the scale of the damage.

"Haiti
is facing the largest humanitarian event witnessed since the
earthquake six years ago," said Mourad Wahba, the U.N.
Secretary-General's Deputy Special Representative for Haiti.

Over
200,000 people were killed in Haiti, the poorest country in the
Western Hemisphere, by the January 2010 earthquake.

Early
reports suggested that Cuba had not been hit as hard as Haiti, where
the situation was described as "catastrophic" in the port
town of Les Cayes.

In
the Cuban city of Guantanamo, streets emptied as people moved to
shelters or inside their homes.

Matthew
is likely to remain a major hurricane through at least Thursday night
as it sweeps through the Bahamas towards Florida and the Atlantic
coast of the southern United States, the NHC said. The governor of
South Carolina ordered the evacuation of more than 1 million people
from Wednesday afternoon.

With
communications out across most of Haiti and a key bridge impassable
because of a swollen river, there was no immediate word on the full
extent of potential casualties and damage from the storm in the
poorest country in the Americas.

But
Pentagon spokesman Peter Cook told reporters in Washington the U.S.
Navy was considering sending an aircraft carrier and other ships to
the region to aid relief efforts.

The
United States has already offered Haiti the use of some helicopters,
said Haitian Interior Minister Francois Anick Joseph, who added that
damage to housing and crops in the country was apparently extensive.

Twice
destroyed by hurricanes in the 18th century, Les Cayes was hit hard
by Matthew.

"The
situation in Les Cayes is catastrophic, the city is flooded, you have
trees lying in different places and you can barely move around, the
wind has damaged many houses," said Deputy Mayor Marie Claudette
Regis Delerme, who fled a house in the town of about 70,000 when the
wind ripped the roof off.

One
man died as the storm crashed through his home in the nearby beach
town of Port Salut, Haiti's civil protection service said. He had
been too sick to leave for a shelter, officials said. The body of a
second man who went missing at sea was also recovered, the government
said. Another fisherman was killed in heavy seas over the weekend as
the storm approached.

STARTING
FROM SCRATCH

As
much as 3 feet (1 meter) of rain was forecast to fall over hills in
Haiti that are largely deforested and prone to flash floods and
mudslides, threatening villages as well as shantytowns in the capital
Port-au-Prince.

The
hurricane has hit Haiti at a time when tens of thousands of people
are still living in flimsy tents and makeshift dwellings because of
the 2010 earthquake.

"Farms
have been hit really hard. Things like plantains, beans, rice –
they're all gone," said Hervil Cherubin, country director in
Haiti for Heifer International, a nonprofit that is working with
30,000 farming families across Haiti. "Most of the people are
going to have to start all over again. Whatever they accumulated the
last few years has been all washed out."

Matthew
was churning around 15 miles (24 km) south of the eastern tip of Cuba
at 8 p.m. EDT (0000 GMT). It was moving north at about 9 miles per
hour (14 kph), the NHC said.

Cuba's
Communist government traditionally puts extensive efforts into saving
lives and property in the face of storms, and authorities have spent
days organizing teams of volunteers to move residents to safety and
secure property.

The
storm thrashed the tourist town of Baracoa in the province of
Guantanamo, passing close to the disputed U.S. Naval base and
military prison.

The
U.S. Navy ordered the evacuation of 700 spouses and children along
with 65 pets of service personnel as the storm approached. U.S.
President Barack Obama had earlier canceled a trip to Florida
scheduled for Wednesday because of the potential impact of the storm,
the White House said.

A
hurricane watch was in effect for Florida from an area just north of
Miami Beach to the Volusia-Brevard county line, near Cape Canaveral,
which the storm could reach on Thursday, the hurricane center said.

Tropical
storm or hurricane conditions could affect parts of Georgia, South
Carolina, and North Carolina later this week, even if the center of
Matthew remained offshore, the NHC said.

Governor
Rick Scott declared a state of emergency for Florida on Monday,
designating resources for evacuations and shelters and putting the
National Guard on standby.